By Kieron Gillen on November 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm.
Word reaches us (via tiny word-machines) that the demo version of the latest version of Hacker Evolution – Brian Spencer’s Hacker Evolution: Untold – has a demo out. Don’t worry about the name. It’s not an indie-dev ego-outburst, but the name of the lead character. I’ve played a couple of the previous versions, and it remains the serious competitor to Introversion’s classic Uplink. From my brief look at the demo, it maintains its main separating point – that is, you actually use a text interface to type DOS-line orders to go about your hacks. Man, it’s giving me Wargames flashbacks. There’s little information on the site proper, but its plot seems to be about the technological singularity aka The Rapture For Geeks. You can get the demo here, and if it takes your fancy, pre-order in time for its December 8th release. Hurrah for games!
27/11/2008 at 17:04 Freelancepolice says:
Is it quite open ended in a similar way to uplink?
27/11/2008 at 17:06 Meat Circus says:
Wargames flashbacks? Then I definitely won’t be playing this.
Because as we all know, the only winning move is not to play.
27/11/2008 at 17:19 Scuzzeh says:
How about a nice game of Chess?
27/11/2008 at 17:51 Duke Nasty VI says:
Hmm, seems like it could be a fun game, but it’s crashing on me every time I try to connect to main.corporate.com in the tutorial level
27/11/2008 at 17:58 loloquaker says:
same problem here
27/11/2008 at 18:11 Skurmedel says:
Joshua
Nerdy movie jokes aside, this sounds neat. I think Uplink was quite good.
27/11/2008 at 18:25 Ixtab says:
I quite enjoy it, what I managed to actually play, but like Duke Nasty VI I get a C++ runtime error or something of the sort every time I try to login to main.corporate.com (connecting via port 99 is actually ok, it’s loging in after that that’s the problem for me.)
27/11/2008 at 18:39 c-Row says:
At first glance, I mistook the picture for an updated version of Syndicate…. damn you, RPS!
27/11/2008 at 18:44 James Tao says:
Among the PC indie stuff I’ve finally wound up playing this year Uplink has probably been my favourite, so this will definitely get an install. A DOS interface should make an already enjoyable concept even better, as long as it can provide the same sort of rush finally figuring out how to break a system created in Uplink (At least the first time around. Mission grind with relatively low amounts of mission types tend to put a damper on things).
27/11/2008 at 19:15 sbs says:
Same problem with the crash here, happened to me 2 times now and I cant be bothered anymore to start again from scratch now.
I will however start a new game of Uplink tonight.
27/11/2008 at 20:11 Pags says:
Aw man, there’s nothing that makes you feel more like a nerd than a good ol’ hacking game. This one’s pretty nifty, though I mostly give props for exosyphen making pre-ordering through Paypal cheaper than with a credit card.
Good demo anyway.
27/11/2008 at 20:28 qrter says:
Coincidentally, I bought Darwinia on Steam yesterday and I decided to buy it as a package deal with Uplink – I ended up playing Uplink all night. Great game.
So I’ll give this demo a go, I will.
27/11/2008 at 21:46 qrter says:
I’m getting the same C++ crash. I posted in exosyphen’s forum with a link to the discussion here (seeing as quite a lot of people are experiencing the bug).
27/11/2008 at 22:07 Robert Muresan says:
Hello everyone,
My name is Robert Muresan, and I am the developer of this game. The demo wasn’t yet intended for the wide public (just for previous customers), but since the word got out, here are a few notes:
1. Thanks for posting the brief review and for the great words posted by everyone.
2. The bug that you have encountered, has been fixed. Just redownload the demo from the same link, and install it over.
Enjoy the game!
27/11/2008 at 22:34 qrter says:
Ooh look at that, very nice! :)
27/11/2008 at 23:24 Radiant says:
I love it.
So much atmosphere, yes mostly suggested but that’s the best kind!
Also what do you mean I haven’t found all the servers in the first level?
I see :)
27/11/2008 at 23:26 DeliriumWartner says:
I played to near the end of level 2 and so far I’m really enjoying it. There are a few niggling issues (such as the irritating music and the fiddly scroll-bar) but I’ve generally enojyed it. Not quite as much as Uplink, so far, but the varied places and tasks is all good, though quite linear.
The main problem I encountered was that I ran out of places to bounce from, meaning I couldn’t actually progress without getting traced. At all. Which I assume means an end to the game, so I could go no furthur.
What I’d like to see is a greater feeling of control as you progress through a certain level. In Uplink you steadily felt more Godlike as you played, bouncing and pinging like there was no tomorrow, a fact which was cleverly (and crushingly) played against you when you suddenly fell on your arse. If it were up to me I’d swap limited bounces per address with the addresses logging the bounce, increasing the trace likelihood. But still, good hacking fun! More please.
27/11/2008 at 23:35 Pags says:
Delirium: You can always kill a trace for $1500, which I assume you’d have. Agreed that it does mean you have to know what you’re going to do or eventually you do run out of bounces though.
Also I second the fiddly scroll-bar, could we have some mouse-scroll functionality? It’s a niggling issue, but an issue nonetheless.
27/11/2008 at 23:37 Robert Muresan says:
Hello,
@Radiant: Each level has at least one hidden host, which can be used to gain some extra cash, bounce through it, and extra score points for finding it.
@DeliriumWartner: See my note for @Radiant also.
The levels in the demo, are kept a bit simple and straightforward, so that people can accomodate with the game. Even in these levels, there are some alternatives to finish a level (hidden exploits to ease your task, etc). The bounces are an actual game inside the game. You will learn a lot of tricks on how to properly use them.
Here is a free tip:
Always bounce through the host(s) that have the highest number of bounces available. This way you will have the highest number of hosts available.
Example: You have 2 hosts. 1 with 2 bounces, and the other with 1 bounce. If you bounce once through the last, and later you need 2 hosts in a bounce, you are toast :)
Hacking is not fun and easy. It’s hard and very challenging … and brings you a great amount of satisfaction when you succed.
27/11/2008 at 23:38 Robert Muresan says:
@Pags: Try dragging with the mouse inside the entire window :) Works like the scroll bar :) … just click and drag in the window
28/11/2008 at 00:19 Pags says:
Oh awesome, works just as good.
28/11/2008 at 03:35 Comrade_Ranger says:
just one question…..can you hack a gibson?
28/11/2008 at 08:52 Digit says:
<3 I’m trying this now… I loved Uplink. :D
28/11/2008 at 09:03 Robert Muresan says:
“Hack a Gibson?”
28/11/2008 at 09:10 much2much says:
When RPS says “serious competitor” to Uplink I think they mean serious in a middle aged accountant washing his car and mowing his lawn kind of way.
Uplink was awesome. Hacker Evolution wasn’t.
28/11/2008 at 15:13 Scuzzeh says:
@Robert Muresan
It’s a “Hackers” reference.
28/11/2008 at 15:21 Jaz says:
Only Kieron Gillen is allowed to write “Hurrah for Games!” at the end of an article.
29/11/2008 at 00:20 Schyz says:
I cannot play this game with my dvorak keyboard. Other games support international layouts, as easy as take the one Windows uses, so I can play most games with my custom spanish-dvorak keyboard even on games like Tomb Raider Underworld, and it doesn’t need to input commands ;)
29/11/2008 at 01:23 Comrade_Ranger says:
everyone loves that movie :)
29/11/2008 at 07:04 medwards says:
I seriously don’t understand how you can make a movie about hacking and not know “Hack the Gibson!”
However, I love the command-line style… some quibbles about tab-completion (btw, this game has TAB COMPLETION which bash shells have had for aeons and I think is AWESOME for immersion):
Say I can see desk-11.blah and desk-25.blach
I should be able to type crack desk- and on the second tab I see a list of options that match that… right now the shortcut seems to be whatever is numerically smaller based on character code…
the login command strikes me as odd because you don’t have to specify a port….
29/11/2008 at 18:09 Robert Muresan says:
@medwards: The login command tries the password on every service/port … so there is no need to specify the port.
21/12/2008 at 13:03 Shadowcat says:
http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/hacker-evolution-untold/